From Levi Strauss to Mark Zuckerberg, the history of the Jews in San Francisco is closely connected with the global trends of the Jewish diaspora and at the same truly unique. With the 19th-century gold rush, Jews arrived to Northern California along with all other immigrant groups, blending in with the multicultural texture of the city. Free of the constraints left behind in Europe — mostly, Southern Germany and Alsace — they created innovative communal institutions and also greatly influenced the making of the new metropolitan area, supporting education, the arts, and social causes. Later on, immigrants from Eastern Europe expanded the texture of Jewish and cultural life in the city. The blend of innovative experimentation within Jewish communal life and public engagement continues to this day across the San Francisco Bay Area, from experimental communal life to the intersection of tradition and technology that emerges from Jewish life in Silicon Valley.
Speaker: Francesco Spagnolo (PhD Hebrew University, 2007) is the curator of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a professor of Music and Jewish Studies.